Writing Styles by John DeCollibus

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

With over twenty five years of experience in ornamental penmanship and offhand flourishing, master penman John DeCollibus presents his skills in this wonderful Youtube video.http://www.beyondwordsscript.com/

BEST-TEST Paper Cement

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

BEST-TEST Paper Cement is a liquefied, natural rubber cement adhesive, used for permanent and temporary bonds. It is very forgiving and easily cleaned up. No wrinkling, curling, or shrinking and does not stain.Dry mounting – has the most permanence. Coat both surfaces to be joined and let dry. Align and place surfaces together. Don’t press as little movement is possible before drying. For critical alignment, use a slip sheet between coated surfaces as the paper cement won’t stick to clean paper.Wet mounting permits more alignment but does not have the permanence of dry mounting. Apply to one surface only and position before cement dries.Miscellaneous Calligraphy suppliesWhite Rubber Paper Cement

Illuminated Letters – treasury of decorative calligraphy

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Illuminated Letters – a treasury of decorative calligraphy is a wonderful book about illumination. The book is split in to four sections.Illuminated LettersThe first section is a very detailed section on tools and techniques. Many books breeze over the tools you will need – not this one. All tools and materials are covered in great detail. For example, detailed guidance is given on how to prepare your workstation, fit a reservoir to the nib, paper types, preparing vellum and making egg tempera paint. Finally there is detailed instruction on gilding and using gold leaf.Illuminated Letters - toolsSection two deals with a wide of topics about preparing to work, including; layout and design, planning your work, enlarging letters and details, and transferring designs are covered in this section.The third section of the book is an alphabet directory containing completed decorated alphabets and numbers based on six historic styles which range from 7th-century Celtic to 15th-century Renaissance. Within each historic style, detailed instruction is given on how to create an illuminated letter. Each alphabet sections is followed by a selection of scripts suitable for writing out accompanying text.illuminated letters exampleThe final section of this book is a contemporary gallery showing examples of work from some contemporary calligraphers. The work not only reflects the historical development of the craft, but also shows something of calligraphy and illumination’s exciting present.Scribblers Calligraphy Books

Cleaning Nibs

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

To ensure reliable ink flow, it is important to keep your calligraphy pen clean. Dip pens and nibs should be cleaned after each use. The easiest way to do this is to simply rinse the pen in running cold or warm water. Be careful not to loose the reservoirs down the plug hole! – I know :( Sometimes an old brush can be useful to help clean nibs and dip pens.Nibs and reservoirs must be dry before storing them. You can dry them using a sheet of kitchen roll. Lay the nibs and reservoirs at one end of kitchen roll sheet, and then fold the other end over the nibs. Finally gently squeeze the folded up sheet between your hands. It may be necessary to repeat to make sure everything is dry.If you clean your nib whilst it is still in the penholder you need to be careful not to get the metal ferrule wet as it will soon rust. This then makes it much harder to insert and remove the nib.